Football offensive behaviour law may not be legal

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Football offensive behaviour law may not be legal Members of the Scottish Parliament have been cautioned by a notable academic that changing the law with the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill could make the legal process look foolish. Tom Devine is a professor from the University of Edinburgh has described the bill as far too wide, saying that it could say that simple political statements were sectarian crimes.

Devine has commented, “The problem is people are not going to be sure what is a political belief and what is an offensive statement. If these bill is made law than it will bring this area of the law into disrepute. I also wonder why this Bill has been extended to such a great extent, so that it now covers many other things, rather than the sectarianism that it was originally made for.”

The potential law has been expanded to cover any offence that is driven by race, colour, sexual orientation or disability, among others. Devine has said, “There are important issues that need to be covered, but this law will just make everything far too ambiguous. We need to wait for there to be real evidence for making such a law, only that way will it be effective. There has only been one study conducted, back in 2004 and that was no where near deep enough.”

Cardinal Keith O’Brien  has said in the past that the reason for the religious violence in Scotland is because the state is against Catholics, Professor Devine has said the passing of this law will only confirm this belief. Research from the 2004 report suggested that Catholics were many times more likely to be subject to a sectarian attack. He also urged the Scottish government to wait for the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland to complete a more conclusive study, which has been collecting data since 2003.

New Book Challenges Wenger’s Strategy and looks to Arsenals future

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New Book Challenges Wenger's Strategy and looks to Arsenals future

New Book Challenges Wenger's Strategy and looks to Arsenals future

ARSÈNAL – THE MAKING OF A MODERN SUPERCLUB

By Alex Fynn & Kevin Whitcher

Published by Vision Sports Publishing, Out Now!

RRP £8.99, ISBN 978 1 9076 3731 5

Which Way Now for Arsenal?……… This New Book Challenges Wenger’s Strategy and questions the future of Arsène AND the club

Due to the disappointing start that Arsenal have made to the new season, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for the release of this new book. Co-written by Alex Fynn and Kevin Witcher, this book asks questions regarding the future together of Arsène Wenger and the club. They also aim to ask and answer all those awkward questions that all gunner fans will want to know.

In the revised and fully update version of the book, these are just a few of the questions they have asked:

1)            Is Arsenal still a ‘big’ club?

2)            What needs to change to keep Arsenal at football’s top table? What’s stopping them attracting the type of world-class star that once graced the ‘Invincibles’ side of the 2003/2004 season?

3)            Is Arsène Wenger the right man to take Arsenal forward?

4)            Where does Wenger’s reliance on youth – which has consistently failed to deliver silverware over the last 6 years – stem from? Is it actually harming the club more than it is benefitting it?

5)            What does the club’s conspicuously reclusive Board really think of the current situation on the pitch?

6)            Who are the key figures lurking in the shadows at the Emirates? How much say do they have in Wenger’s transfer dealings?

7)            In light of recent departures, how much money does Arsenal really have at its disposal for strengthening the club’s current threadbare squad?

8)            What would it take for Wenger and Arsenal to ever part company?

9)            Despite their well-documented on-field problems, why is Arsenal still – potentially – in a better position than their great rivals, Manchester United?

Both of the authors are renowned experts on football and have an inside track on all the latest goings on at Arsenal, in a nutshell, what they don’t know about this club simply isn’t worth knowing.

This latest edition of the seminal biography of Arsenal, which was a bestseller, has 5 new chapters which take in all the events of the past 2 seasons, and is based on the unprecedented access which the author’s were granted. These include exclusive interviews with both current and former players, key members of the board and the man himself,  Arsène Wenger.

The book looks in great detail at the way that the club was transformed into a global super team under the leadership of Arsène Wenger, and challenges the French coach to change some of his tried and trusted methods in order that Arsenal keep their place amongst the elite both in the premiership and in Europe.

The Observer has described this book as “fascinating”, and the Guardian thinks it is “shrewd and well informed”. Arsènal: The Making of a Modern Superclub, has had positive comments from all who have reviewed it, and ‘When Saturday Comes’, the respected football magazine commented that “at last, there was a football book with reflected the age and the modern game”.

12 Spanish clubs want more TV cash

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12 Spanish clubs want more TV cash The chiefs of 12 Spanish clubs in the first division got together on Thursday to fight for more revenue from the TV rights system which they say greatly favours Real Madrid and Barcelona. The president of Sevilla, Jose Maria del Nido, led the charge against the two giants of the Spanish game, and invited all the clubs except Real and Barca to the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan stadium.

The clubs’ plan is to ponder what they call the unfair, unequal and outrageous system that is currently in place to distribute financial rights from TV broadcasts, something that is unique in the leagues of Europe. Del Nido said in a statement that the current distribution favours Real and Barca year after year, to the detriment of the other teams. He adds that more money meant better players and had a knock on effect for endorsements and sponsors.

Barcelona and Real Madrid each receive about 140m euros a year from television rights, whilst the smaller clubs like Malaga, Real sociedad and Levante receive only 12m. Del Nido, renowned for his outspokenness, pulled no punches when he blasted the Spanish league as being the biggest pile of rubbish not just in Europe, but in the whole world. He added that it was a third world league where two clubs took everyone else’s money.

The other teams present at the meeting along with Sevilla were Atletico Madrid, Atletico Bilbao, Espanyol, Real Betis, Malaga, Granada, Racing Santander, Osasuna, Villareal, Real Zaragoza and Valencia. Four other clubs, Sporting Gijon, Getafe, Real Sociedad and Rayo Vallecano were not at the meeting but completely backed the campaign, according to the Sevilla statement that Del Nido released.

David Beckham brother in law in legal tussle

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David Beckham brother in law in legal tussle The brother in law of David Beckham was made to feel a failure in this high flying job in the city for not arranging meetings between his colleagues and his famous relative, a tribunal was told yesterday. 32 year old broker Darren Flood, who is the husband of Victoria Beckham’s sister Louise also suffered racist taunts as his grandfather came from India.

Mr. Flood is claiming constructive dismissal as he says he felt that he was forced to resign from his £50,000 a year job and that he suffered verbal abuse from the boss of the broking firm he worked for, London based BGC International. He is also alleging that BGC, which is located in Canary Wharf, carried out trades that were morally unacceptable and there was both heavy drinking and a strong drug culture within the firm.

Mr Flood, from Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire, says that he was also routinely asked to set up meetings with the Beckhams for clients in Los Angeles and Milan, and was made to feel very inadequate when he didn’t. He says that he felt unhappy about bringing his private life into the workplace and has never exploited his relationship to the Beckhams. He added that his stock answer was to see what he could do but never did.

. He said that his boss, Tony Herbert, was an incessant bully who repeatedly called him a ****. He also alleges that a senior manager at BCG who was wreaking of alcohol also confronted him and told him he had better make sure that David Beckham came to their offices. The hearing, being held in East London, is continuing.

The Smell of Football: Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone’s eventful 35 year-career in football

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The Smell of Football: Mick 'Baz' Rathbone's eventful 35 year-career in football ‘The Smell of Football’ is the candid story of his eventful 35 year-career in professional football of Mick ‘Baz’ Rathbone.

As a young player crippled by nerves (and an irrational fear of the legendary Trevor Francis!), Baz struggled to hold down a place at his boyhood club, Birmingham City, but went on to forge a distinguished career in the lower leagues with Blackburn and Preston in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Baz qualified as a physio when his body finally gave in and, after a rollercoaster season battling against the relegation trap door as manager/physio at Halifax, he re-joined Preston where he met up with a young David Moyes. After a successful period at Preston he eventually joined forces again with David at Everton as Head of Sports Medicine.

At Goodison Park he was responsible for the well being of millions of pounds worth of talent – rubbing shoulders with the likes of Duncan Ferguson, Wayne Rooney and Tim Cahill – in a remarkable eight year spell that would take him to the heights of walking out at Wembley on FA Cup Final day.

The book is the honest, uncensored account of life in the dressing room – charting the changing face of football up and down the divisions, from booze-fuelled bus trips and £50 a week pay packets, to the glitz and glamour of the Premiership and its celebrity trappings.